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AIXpert Blog is about the AIX operating system from IBM running on POWER based machines called Power Systems and software related to it like PowerVM for virtualisation, PowerVC for Deploying VM's and PowerSC for security plus performance monitoring and nmon

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IBM Systems Director 6.3 Arrives 10 Days Early

Yes, you read that right - it arrived earlier than the date in the IBM Announcement - a free to use unexpected Xmas present from IBM. I have never heard of an early delivery before - perhaps I am getting to old and cynical :-)

The Base Server download for AIX is a larger 1.9 GB file (was 1.3 GB for 6.2) but that includes includes AEM,VMControl (and Service and support manager but we probably don't need that as we have the function in Power Systems via the HMC). They all get installed in one go but you can activate the plug-ins when you like - this lets you postpone the start of your now 90 trial use (was 60 days). This means that we in AIX land just need to add WPAR Mgr (61MB). Then you should go find in your AIX DVDs or order the AIX Profile Manager 1.1.+ media - this is the hot new AIX 6.1 TL6 and AIX 7.1 TL1 performance setting, security and compliance tool to reduce system admin work and enforce consistent settings across the server farm. Recently, seen demos of this and want to give it ago.

For me the Systems Director features of most interest for Power Systems and AIX are

If you have the supported hardware the 6) Storage Control and 7) Network Control are good additions too. I guess the ISD Enterprise edition includes the excellent IBM Tivoli Monitoring tools and TADDM should be on the list too but I have a local expert in ITM, so I leave that to him.

You need new plug-ins tooDon't forget, when you upgrade from Systems Director 6.1 or 6.2 to 6.3 that you will need the matching upgraded plug-ins too for 6.3 support. Froma quick look around they all seem to be there ready for download - we had to wait a week or two last time - well done guys.

Now it has a DB2 default databaseOne major improvement with 6.3 is that the default RDBMS installed with the Server code is now a single purpose dedicated function DB2. The Apache Derby was the default database but that had scaling and memory use and only really for a quick proof of concept. The DB2 embedded version is largely invisible to the System Director users. You can also use Oracle, SQLServer and a regular DB2 database for those with a single RDBMS strategy or site policy and already have the skills. If you have Apache Derby for 6.2 installed then installing 6.3 will migrate you to DB2 - that is a really nice feature to get you off Derby without the horrors of "smreset" and starting again from scratch with a scalable database.

Where to go?Go to http://www.ibm.com/systems/software/director/- you need an IBM id to sign in (just takes 30 seconds) and you can start downloading.

Of course, the first few days will be a busy time for the download servers and it is a big file so start early or even better over night (I am using VNC to a AIX machine running Firefox for the download).

If you are setting up a new Systems Director server then I recommend:

Installing Systems Director on a brand new AIX virtual machine (LPAR) at a recent TL+service pack - I have AIX 6.1 TL6 service pack 6

Have a separate NIM server (don't for get it always needs to be at a high level) - I have AIX 7.1 TL1 service pack 1

2) IBM Systems Director Sizing ToolWeb-based sizing tool which can be used to size a new system, to size an upgrade to an existing system, or to size a consolidation of several systems.

So we can quickly get the right CPU, RAM, disk resources with the sizing tool and the pre-install tool will make sure you have the right software pre-reqs before you start. They should make for a good install experience. These are good tools to use while you are waiting for the main 1.9 GB to download :-)

Well, I am off to give it all a go and plan to record my experience in a movie and will blog the results here.

Thanks Nigel Griffiths

ps: Please don't download until Dec 9th - so my download does not slow down ... currently at 1.6 GB after ~6 hours.